Typing Practice for Beginners: Where to Start

Learn eight keys first

The home row is A, S, D, F for the left hand and J, K, L and the semicolon for the right. Everything in touch typing is built on returning to those eight positions, so learning them properly is not a preliminary — it is most of the skill.

The F and J keys have small ridges you can feel. Use them. Being able to put your hands on the keyboard correctly without looking is the first real milestone, and it usually takes a few days.

Add keys in small groups

Once the home row is comfortable, add the top row, then the bottom, then numbers and punctuation. Each new group should feel awkward for a day or two and then settle. If it does not settle, you have added too many at once — go back.

Resist the urge to jump to real typing before the letters are automatic. Typing a paragraph badly reinforces the wrong movements just as effectively as typing a drill well reinforces the right ones.

A realistic first week

Day one and two: the home row only, fifteen minutes each. The aim is not speed — it is putting your hands on the keyboard in the right place without looking, and typing simple combinations like "dad", "salad" and "flask" without glancing down to check.

Day three to five: add the top row a few keys at a time. E and I and R come up constantly in English, so they settle fastest; the outer reaches like Q and P will feel wrong for longer, and that is normal rather than a sign you are doing it wrong.

Day six and seven: type something real. A paragraph from a book, an email you were going to write anyway. It will be slow and it will be frustrating, and it is the point — the drills are scaffolding, and the skill only becomes yours when you use it for something you actually wanted to do.

What to ignore

Ignore your words-a-minute for the first fortnight. It will be low, it will be discouraging, and it measures nothing useful while the movements are still being learned. Come back to it once the letters no longer need thinking about, and it will be a useful number rather than a demoralising one.

Ignore advice about expensive keyboards and alternative layouts. Both are real things that matter to a few people, and neither is what is between you and typing at 50 words a minute. A better keyboard makes typing more pleasant; it does not make you faster.

Ignore anyone who tells you there is a trick. There is not. There is a correct hand position, and there is repetition, and the repetition has to happen on the keys you are worst at rather than the ones you enjoy.